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The Weight of Love and the Anglo-Saxon Cold Water Ordeals

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The Weight of Love and the Anglo-Saxon Cold Water Ordeals Reading Medieval Siudies XL (2014) The Weight of Love and the Anglo-Saxon Cold Water Ordeals Thomas D. Hill Cornell University The Old English Cold Water Ordeals, which prescribe how an accused person was to be immersed in water and required to 'prove' his or her innocence by being accepted by the water, by sinking rather than floating, are very strange documents from the perspective of modern readers. Trial by ordeal generally is a practice which most modem scholars find strange and repugnant and while Cold Water Ordeals do not involve burning the accu,sed as the Boiling Water or Hot Iron ordeals do, the idea that {he life of an accused person might hang on whether they sink or float in a pool or other body of water seems very problematic to modern rationalists. One fairly extended scene in Monty Pytbon and the Holy Grail, for example, concerns a debate about whether a water ordeal might prove the guilt or innocence of an accused witch. However repugnant, irrational and strange the logic of the Cold Water Ordeal might seem, such rituals were quite common in medieyal and early modern Europe and persisted in folk belief at least until quite recently.' Since there are no classical or Biblical texts that might inspire or justify such ordeals, it is generally assumed that the cold water ordeals derive from native Anglo-Saxon or perhaps more generally Gennanie folklore and folk belief. One well known text which supports this II argument is the prose conclusion to Atlamit! in groenlenzca in which Gudrun after killing her children, feeding them to her husband and then killing him, goes to the sea and casts herself into it. She is attempting to kill herself as her Volsung predecessor Signy did, but while the flames killed and consumed Signy, the waters reject Gudrun who floats over the waves and is cast up in the land of J6nakr. J6nakr then marries her, begets children and thus begins another cycle of Volsung adventures. Guorun geee pli Iii seevar, er hon hafOi drepil Alia, geee ,il Ii seeinn ok vildifara ser. Hon maui eigi slJcqva. Rac hana yfir fioroinn a land !anaers kOllungs. Hann lecc he/mar. Peirra synir voru peil" S9rli ok Erpr ok HamiJir. 1 For discuss ion of swimming or 'fleeting ' witches, wh ich is one common fonn of the Cold Water Ordeals, see the article 'swinuning' in Rosse ll Hope Robbins, Th e Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology (New York: Crown Publishers, 1959), pp. 492-4. For a convenient listing of Cold Water Ordeals in a variety of different sources, see Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature, revi sed edn (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958), iii , p. 393 ; H222, 'Ordcal by Water' . 2 All quotations of Eddic poetry and prose are from Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius hrsg. Gustav Neckel, rev. Hans Kuhn, fifth edn (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1983) by title, stanza and page number. Whether to include the prose text from which J am quoting as the conclusion to Atlamal in groenlellzco or as the introduction to GuorUnarkvQl is purely a matter of editorial discretion and editors differ conceming thi s question. Fra Guorull o , ~ 1, p. 263. - THE WEIGHT OF LOVE AND THE ANGLO-SAXON COLD WATER ORDEALS 35 (Gudrun went then to the sea when she had killed Atli. She went out on the sea And wished to kill herself. She could not sink. The [sea] swept her across the fjord to the land of Jonakr, the King. He married her. Their children were Sorli, Erpr and Hambir). This moment is reprised in a difficult stanza in Guorunarkv9t. Gecc ec til strandar, gr9m varc nornom, vilda ek hrinda sldo grio jJeira; ho/u mik, me drecjJo, hdvar baror, jJvi ec land O/slec, al lifo skyldoc.' (I went to the beach I was angry with the noms ] wished to thrust [myself] Into their harsh peace [?]. The high waves lifted me, they did not drown me So that I climbed on land, So that] must live). The dating of the Eddie texts is notoriously difficult. It is universally agreed, however, that the Eddie poems and the prose comments on them are older than the late-thirteenth- century manuscript in which they are preserved. Certainly some of the lore which is preserved in the Eddie corpus, the names of heroes and peoples, and certain motifs and narrative lines are very old indeed, but the date of the poems and prose texts as we have them is disputed. The correspondence, however, between this episode and the various Cold Water Ordeals is sufficiently striking - the idea that the water rejects the accursed one - that most scholars assume that these texts are related and that the account of Gudrun's miraculous survival is in effect a Cold Water Ordeal and is evidence that this idea was current at an early date­ whatever the date of Gu(JrUnarkvQI in its present form might be.' Jfthe Cold Water Ordeals were originally Germanic, they presumably originated during the pre-Christian period and were thus 'pagan' in origin. In the form in which we have them in Anglo-Saxon England, however, they are very much Christian rituals. The ritual includes a Mass during which the 3 Guon.'tnarkwlt, stanza 13, p. 266. 4 For commentary on this question, see The Poetic Edda: /, Heroic Poems, ed. by Ursula Dronke (Oxford; OUP, t 969), p. t47. 36 THOMAS D. HILL accused receives communion after due warning about partaking of the sacrament if onc is in a state of serious sin and a series of prayers blessing and adjuring the waters by which the truth or falsehood of the accusation is to be revealed. The specific problem that I wish to discuss here is the explanation of the Cold Water rituals which is explicit in these texts and which concerns the question of why the water might ' reject ' the body ofa si nner. These texts, however, are not well known even among Anglo-Saxonists; and before focusing on this problem it is appropriate to quote that portion of the ritual in which the waters in which the accused is going to be immersed are adjured. I therefore quote the prayers 'conjuring' and 'adjuring' the water in which the accused is to be lowered from a text which occurs in a number of manuscripts and which Liebermann identifies as a Judicium Dei Ritua/e: Ka/twasser (Judgment of God, Ritual; Cold Water). Inc/pit adiurafio aquae. Deus, qui aquarum substantiam iudica tua exercens diluuti inundatione milia popu/orum interemisti et Noe iustum cum suis sa/uandunl censuisti, Deus qui in mari Rubro cuneos Egyptiorum inuo/uisti et agmina lsrahelitica inperterritG abire iussisti, uirtutem tuae benediction is his aquis infimdere eL nauum ac mirabile signum in eis ostendere digneris, ut innacentes a crimine furti - ue/ homicidii ue/ adu/terii aut aJterius.. naeui - cuius examinationem agimus, more aquae in se recipiant et in profundum pertrahant, conscios au/em huius criminis a se repel/ant atque reiciant nee patiantur recipere corpus, quod ab onere bonitatis euacua/um uen/us iniquitatis • et inane cons/ituit; quod care/ pondere uirtutis, careat pondere pro p ria e substantiae in aquis. Per dominum ... 5 (The adjuration of the water begins. Oh God, who using the nature of water, killed thousands of peoples by the inundation of the flood and judged Noe the just one and hi s [family] to be saved, God who enveloped the battalions of the Egyptians in the Red Sea and ordered the Israelite bands to go unafraid, deign to pour out the power of your blessing on these waters and to show a new and marvelous sign in them so that those innocent of the crime of theft or homicide or adultery or of another di sfigurement - whose examination we perform - [these waters] may receive in themselves in the manner of water and may draw [the innocents] to the depth; [but] [those] conscious of this crime may these waters repcl from themselves and may they reject them nor may they suffer to receive the body which emptied of the weight of goodness the wind of iniquity lifts up and makes empty; but what is wanting the weight of virtue may be wanting the weight of proper substance in the waters. Through the Lord ... ). 5 Die Gesetze del' Angelsachsen, ed. by Felix Liebermann (1903-16; repro Aalen: Scientia, 1960), i, p. 404; Judicium Dei Riluale: Ka/twasser, 20. THE WEIGHT OF LOVE AND THE ANGLO-SAXON COLD WATER ORDEALS 37 Another prayer identified as alia in the ritual, which presumably means it is an alternative invocation of the power of God, also alludes to the theme of the weight of love. Adiuro Ie, creatura aquae, per Deum patrem et Filium et Spirilum sanc/unt , eL per tremendum diem judicii, et per duodecim aposlo/OS, et per septuaginta duos discipu/os, et per duodecim prophetas, et per viginti quatuor seniores, qui assidue Dominum laudan!, el per centum quadraginla quatuor milia, quae sequuntur Agnum, et per omnia agmina sanctorum angelorurn, archange/orum, thronorum, dominationum, principatuum, potestatum, virtu tum, Cherubin atque Seraph in, et per omnia milia sane/arum martyrum, virginum et confessorum. Adiuro Ie per sanguinem domini nostri lesu Christi, et per qu~tuor euangelia, et per quallior ellangelistas, necnon et per septuaginta duos /ihros Veleris ac Nov; Testamenti, el per omnes scriptores sanetos ac doetores eorUfn. Adiuro Ie per sanctam ecclesiam catha/jcarn, et per cornmunionem sanetorum, et per resurrectionem eorum, ut jias aqua exorcizata, adiurata et abfirmata adversus inimicum hominis diabolum, et adversus hominem, qui ab eo seductus furtum hoc - vel homicidium aut adu/terium - un,de ratio agilur, perpetravit, ut l1ullatenus eum in Ie submergi aul in profundum Irahi permittas, sed a te repel/as atque reicias, nee patiaris recipere corpus, quod ab onere bonitatis inane est factum; sed, quod caret pondere virtutis, careal pondere propriae substanciae in teo /nnocentes uero a praedicto crimine more aquae in Ie recipias et in profundum innocuos perlrahas.
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